Steelhands - Jaida Jones [37]
Even if Toverre didn’t love me the way I’d wanted him to—the way a husband should love his wife—Toverre and I were in this together. If anyone ever did come along—if they managed to run the gauntlet of Toverre’s complete insanity and come out unscathed—then they were going to have to go through me, too. And if anyone in this city so much as looked at my crazy fiancé cross-eyed, then they were going to find themselves with my fist in their face.
It was an indelicate thought, so I kept it to myself. I didn’t want to be sending Toverre into fits of fainting on top of everything else. Poor thing probably thought he knew how to take care of himself, but he definitely didn’t.
Speaking of which, he was fidgeting by the fireplace like an impatient child, checking his pocket watch, tapping it exactly three times on the right side, then sliding it carefully back into his pocket. I did up the final laces in the front of my dress, tugged at the skirts, and turned around. The woolen underclothes were much more comfortable than wearing pants underneath my dress had been, and I could already see that they made everything look sleeker. They weren’t even as itchy as I’d expected, either.
“Huh,” I said out loud, looking down at myself.
“What is it?” Toverre asked, not turning around. “You’ve put them on backward, haven’t you? I just know it.”
“I was going to say they look wonderful, but now you’ve ruined it,” I told him, smoothing out my skirts. “The boots fit, too.”
“I thought they would,” he said, glancing over his shoulder—like he was afraid I might be wearing nothing but the boots and undergarments, and I guess he had his reasons to watch out for something like that—before turning to face me at last. “You and Mother are the same size in most respects. Not up there, of course, but your shoes.”
“Watch it,” I told him, tugging on my coat to discourage any more talk of my bosom. This coat was the one piece of clothing I knew would always pass muster, because Toverre had bought it for me as a gift last winter. Big buttons, high collar, a deep bottle green, and all of it very flattering. No doubt he’d tell me it was going out of style soon enough, but until then I was planning on wearing the hell out of it.
“Guess I’m ready,” I said, holding out my arm to him.
Toverre tugged on his sleek gray gloves, reaching out to touch the doorknob the way most people picked a rat out of a trap.
With the help of a map he’d procured somewhere, we made our way to the Amazement, Thremedon’s theater and entertainment district. It was close to the ’Versity Stretch, but not too close; students probably didn’t need any extra distracting, I was coming to realize, with a stack of books up to my waist to get through in the next two months.
Toverre wasn’t planning for us to take in any shows, of course, but wanted instead to “drink in the sight of the people who were.” The sun hadn’t yet set fully, but the skies were growing dark, and the streetlights had all begun to glow faintly in the dusk. It was pretty as new snow in the country, and that was before we came to the row of theaters proper, with their establishments lit up in all different arrangements of color, each proclaiming why its show was the only one you should think of seeing.
Men in sharp, dark coats with their collars turned up walked side by side with women in neat little fur hats, heeled boots stepping carefully around the patches of ice littering the streets. And Toverre had been right; they were all matching, down to their gloves and their muffs. Some of them even matched the men they were walking with. There were some men walking together, of course, and even women alone with no chaperones—unheard-of business in the countryside, but something that made me wonder just as much as I was sure the lean young men leaning on one another made Toverre wonder. Or perhaps “wonder” wasn’t the